• Best Blog Post of the Year – “Why do I Write about Wine” by Evan Dawson, New York Cork Report
• Best New Wine Blog – Wine Julia by Julia Crowley
• Best Original Video or Photography on a Wine Blog – WineOh.tv by Monique Soltani
• Best Industry Wine Blog – The Gray Report by W. Blake Gray
• Best Wine Reviews on a Wine Blog – Kens Wine Guide.com by Ken Hoggins
• Best Writing on a Wine Blog – Vinography by Alder Yarrow
• Best Single Subject on a Wine Blog – On the Wine Trail in Italy by Alfonso Cevola
• Best Winery Wine Blog – The Journey of Jordan by Lisa Mattson and the Jordan Team
• Best Overall Wine Blog – Jamie Goode’s Wine Blog by Jamie Goode

—

And so, here I am, Sunday morning, always a bridesmaid, listening as the winners field questions from the podium. Should I ask them how it feels to trample my dreams as if they were little more than a sad and meager campfire still weakly smoldering in the cool morning mist?

KIDDING!

Maybe I’ll ask them for recommendations on where to get good Marionberry Pie in Portland.

KIDDING AGAIN!

Maybe I’ll ask them whether they think blunderbussational is a word.

Except I know the answer to that.

Maybe I’ll ask them if they’ve ever used the word blunderbussational.

Except I know the answer to that.

Mental note: Don’t use the work blunderbussational anymore.

Except, do.

—

Maybe I won’t ask them anything at all. Maybe I’ll just write them each individually and tell them how impressed I am by what they’ve done.

Yes.

That’s what I’m going to do.

Because that would be truthful.

And the TRUTH … shall set us free.

—

The great Duke Ellington once said, “Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom… In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.”

And what I’m saying is, composition is not just about freedom, it is the enactment of freedom.

Randall Grahm, in his keynote speech, said something to the effect of: when we write about wine, we are actually writing about ourselves.

Which I do not necessarily believe.

But what I will say, is that when we write about wine, we are writing. And when we are writing, we are free.

And when we are free, we are freedom.

So let us ring!

—

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked it’s poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and it’s thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
 An’ the poet and the painter far behind his rightful time
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

— Bob Dylan, “The Chimes of Freedom”

—

Congratulations to the winners, your poems, in naked wonder, are flashing.